I have become fascinated with the political philosophy that
underpinned the beliefs of our founding fathers. Through my journey of
learning, I have discovered that we must move beyond the simple Lockean stereotype
that we have pigeon-holed most of our founding fathers. The men that influenced our founding fathers
ranged from Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Smith and many others. It seems to me that the founding fathers were
charitable in their ability to take divergent political thoughts and use them
to create a country. I am certainly not
a professional historian (or even an amateur one) but my journey of self discovery has been
enlightening for me.
During my “learning journey” I came across a quote by
Montesquieu from The Spirit of Laws (Book
V). The quote is, “Virtue in a republic is a most simple
thing: it is a love of the republic…”. This
quote immediately brought forth two questions that I have thought about a lot
recently.
1. Does
virtue imply a citizenry that acts for the common good of their community and
country?
2. What
does it mean to have “virtuous” leaders in the education realm?
My attempt to answer question #1:
I want to be very clear that I
believe that a society cannot thrive when the majority of its citizens do not
have some belief in the value of doing “good” for the common good. I know that we are living in a world of hyper
individualism and that being a “community organizer” is viewed as a bad thing. Therefore,
I believe the real issue facing us in
the United States is deeper than just a dichotomy of “individualism versus
community”. This is expressed in a
tension between a political view of small and local or large and national. It seems to me that this tension between the individual
and their community and the larger society in which they live has been hard
baked in our society since the American Revolution. The tension was evident in the early days of
the Republic and was not resolved at the Constitutional Convention. Currently in my thought process I see it as a
question of allegiance. Where should a virtuous
person place their allegiance: their local community or the larger
society? Our country has fought a civil
war over this question trying to determine a local “state’s rights” view versus
a nationalistic view.
I think this plays out in my field
of interest which is education. People
are torn between their allegiance to their local school and community (micro)
and what they perceive (and have been told by their federal representatives) as
a failure of the larger, national (macro) education system. People intuitively know that local schools
are important; that most schools (and school officials) are turning themselves
inside out to help kids; and that local change can create a better learning
system. Polls have consistently shown
that people approve of their local schools while also overwhelmingly claim that
education as a whole is not doing well. I believe that we can base high quality
educational decision on the very simple framework of the local community. I will expand more on this in later blog
posts.
My attempt to answer #2:
In
education, I believe a “virtuous” leader has two main qualities.
1. They
are radically learner centered. This
harkens back to what I alluded to in attempting to answer my first
question. Let’s keep things as simple as
possible and have a laser focus on the learners. By focusing on the individual and the
community in which they live we can better attain the needed focus.
2. Virtuous
educational leaders are committed to dismantling the current “factory” model of
education that we currently subject our children to. The system was good for what we needed in the
19th century, but we need to create a new system focused on the
needs of learners and their communities at the local level. Use the local successes to inform larger
policy discussions but we must not continue with the current method of a “top
down” education policy system that attempts to fit every school and community
into similar policy subscriptions.
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